The Stars Never Rise

I didn’t know him well enough yet to think of him as trustworthy.

“Relax.” His smile had slipped a little as he was confronted with my skepticism. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have saved your life. Twice. If I wanted to turn you in for the bounty, I wouldn’t have welcomed you into my home amid wealth and luxury I don’t share with just anyone.” He spread his arms in a grand gesture, taking in the grease, dirt, and trash all around us. “Is there any other fear I can put to rest for you?”

When I only pulled the blanket around myself again, he laughed. “Fine. If I were planning to…you know…” He waved one hand at my entire body. “I wouldn’t have given you a slab of wood with nails sticking out of it.” He pointed to the two-by-four still lying next to me within easy reach. “I’m as protective of my parts as the next guy. More protective than some. So…are we good?”

I thought about that for a minute. Then decided to ignore the question. “Do you really think there’s a bounty for me?”

He chuckled again. “The Church usually calls it a reward, but yeah, they’ve probably put a little cash on the line to encourage your neighbors to join the manhunt.”

Would that happen? Would the Mercers call the police if they saw me? What about Adam and his family? Would they turn me in if they thought that would help Melanie?

I wasn’t sure how much Finn actually knew about what I was facing, but I was sure he knew more than I did. “So…I eat and you talk?” I said, and he nodded, spooning the last of the broth from his paper bowl. “Deal.” I picked up my bowl, hoping Melanie was eating as well as I was, wherever the Church had put her. Thinking about my sister brought up more questions about our mom, which had never been far from the surface. “What else do you know about my mother?”

“I know she was a breeder.” Finn opened another can of stew while we spoke, and I realized I was already starting to feel better physically, thanks to the warm blanket and food. “Your mother—well, the demon masquerading as your mom—conceived you and your sister specifically either to provide herself with a new host body or to sell you to some other demon in need of one.”

“One of each,” I said, and he nodded.

“Two kids means a breeder can keep one and sell one—maximum profit with minimal risk.” He set the can opener in the box, then carefully removed the detached lid from the can and tossed it into the plastic bin. “Some of them really shop around before they commit to a…um…to a look.” His gaze took me in, jeans, tee, blue blanket, and all. “Your mother must have been beautiful at some point.”

My face felt suddenly warm. Under the vigilant eyes of the sisters at school, there was no flirting. No overtly lustful looks, even from those of us who’d already dabbled in sin, fumbling around in the dark with few sounds that could rightfully be considered communication.

But Finn didn’t seem the least bit self-conscious about kind of complimenting me.

My gaze caught on his intense focus, and I had to grasp for the dropped thread of a conversation I’d almost forgotten.

Oh yeah. My mom.

“She was pretty.” Actually, before she’d gotten sick, my mother’d had the kind of beauty that drew attention from strangers. The kind that attracted trouble. Just like Melanie.

“Well, that was no accident,” Finn said. “At some point in the past, she spotted one of your ancestors and decided those were genes she could work with. Breeders tend to stick with a particular bloodline until it hits a dead end.”

I was that dead end. And for the first time in nearly two years, I was able to view my sterilization with something other than total despair and blistering fury. My inability to breed now felt like a huge middle finger flipped at my mother and her demonic machinations.

“They don’t seem to care about gender either,” Finn continued, stirring the second can of stew as I slowly finished my first helping. “In fact, I don’t think demons themselves actually have genders, so if you’d been born a boy, your mom would have been looking for the perfect face/uterus combo to implant with the next generation of her—his—demon seed.”

Suddenly my stew lost all flavor.

“They usually space the kids pretty close together so that the older rarely figures out what’s going on before the younger is ready to harvest.” Finn shrugged and dumped the second can of stew into the pot. “It’s always safest to harvest one at the same time you sell the other.”

“Harvest?” I set my bowl down and wrapped the blanket tighter around my shoulders, but the chill seemed to be coming from inside me, at the thought that there were more kids out there like me and Mellie—born and bred to host the Unclean. “How common is it?”

Finn shrugged. “More common today than it was yesterday, and it’ll be more common tomorrow than it is today.”